SCRIPT & SCREENPLAY : The honor for writing the story of
YPD 2 has been bestowed upon
Lynda Deol & to
Jaswinder Bath for screenplay. Those who don't know about
Lynda, lemme tell you that she is none other than wife of
Sunny Deol. Suffice it to say that the farcical saga takes the three main characters forward on the same moral equilibrium as the first film. What.....you still want to know storyline...As you wish, Kahani begins in Benaras where
The father Dharmendra (God bless his affable screen persona) and the younger son Bobby are certifiable rogues. The other turbaned elder son Sunny is upright, no-nonsense living in London and working as a kind of recovery chief for a bank. Dharmendra & Bobby seek entry into a London businessman’s home, posing as the owners of a certain Oberoi Group of industries. Oberoi ‘pranaam’ is their preferred greeting. While I see everybody holding an iPad, they’ve obviously never been to Google, which is good. Quick search would give this game away. The London bizman (Anu Kapoor) has two young girls in his house – one is his daughter, the other is not. Bobby boy nets the wrong girl first, tries for the right one later. Sunny D is the conscious one who wants to wreck this con plan. Bobby D poses as an artist later to impress the London bizman’s daughter. A chimpanzee accidentally starts playing with colours on his clean canvas. He sells that rubbish as his own abstract painting. The world is in tears, auction houses go nuts while he becomes the “next Picasso”. You think to yourself, if that is art, then surely this is a film. Yes, it is. From starting, the film weaves in and out of a plodding mass of episodes, each one more strenuous and laboured than the previous.
STARCAST : All the three Deols have their own strengths and look great together but they have been badly let down by shoddy storyline, screenplay.
Dharmendra is an icon who still has enough acts up his sleeve to charm you even after crossing 70 but it was real painful to see him being reduced to a mere parodic shadow of his old flamboyant utterly unaffected self in this cheerless travesty masquerading as a comedy. But still he manages to invoke quite a bit laughter with his spontaneous acting in some of his scenes.
Sunny Deol, our own Punjab ka puttar tries hard but is not able to impress much as there is nothing much in the script for him to emote and just remains confined to Desi He-man doing dare devilry. But it is
Bobby Deol who has looked very dashing and oozes loads of confidence into his character portrayal. He lends a certain charm to his performance and emotes perfectly in sync with his character of a swindler who loves to flirt. I was saddened by the fact that fine actors like
Anupam Kher, Johnny Lever and
Anu Kapoor have been given to play such pathetically ridiculous characters.
Anupam Kher who has shown his witty side by playing various comic roles looks at his silliest best in the character of Joginder Armstrong and is not able to raise any guffaws. But not to worry, he is not the only sufferer as same is the case with
Johnny Lever and
Sucheta Khanna whose screen names in the flick are Bunty & Babli and have been given equally bad scenes to perform.The duo have been shown as aides of Anupam who keep on chasing Sunny Deol by donning several get ups varying from SRK Don & his kewl catty , Sardar Sardarni, Chinese couple and keep on testing your patience. No wonder that in the movie Sunny recognizes them whichever get up they come in, Arrre itna irritate karoge to koi bhi pehchaan lega.
Anu Kapoor, also sails in the same boat with not much to work upon as an actor in this movie. Coming to the two gorgeous leading ladies of this movie that is
Neha Sharma &
Kristina Akheeva who have been paired opposite Bobby n Sunny respectively.
Neha has come out impressive and looked confident enough in her Avatar of a bubbly, bindaas babe who is a Salman Khan fan.
Kristina looks good but is not able to emote well n she should be thankful that she was paired opposite Sunny, hence she has been able to scrape through.
TECHNICAL FINESSE : The music for this movie has been composed by duo of
Sharib-Toshi, who have done a very average kind of a job with the kind of tracks they have belted. Cinematographer of
YPD 2 is
Neha Parti who has not been able to impress much with respect the kind of locations where movie has been shot. The visuals as well as the lighting has come out ordinary kinds.
Peter Hein has been credited for being the action director of YPD 2 and he has done fine although some of the action is very difficult to digest (But Kee Fark painda hai when Punjabi Puttar Sunny is there, lotta audience expect unbelievable action).The editing of the movie has been done by
Chirag Jain but the two hour forty minutes runtime is huge for one to witness this unabsorbing drama.
Santosh Sivan, the director pays no serious attention whatsoever to plotting, storytelling, demarcating a character, building lucidity or giving logics. There are very less 'Laugh Out Loud' moment in the entire lengthy proceeding stretching into two hours 40 minutes of a tale that wastes the talents of one of Bollywood's most celebrated film families. Sivan seems to be stuck in a rut using slapstick and double entendre dialogues to engage his audience. We wish he had evolved his sense of humor to suit the changing times.
OVER THE HEAD : Giving credit of being the worst scene to any one scene will be injustice and impartiality to other scenes who have also given their worst and are running contenders for OTH title.
WOW MOMENTS : The scene where Bobby Deol acts and fights in S.K's dabangg ishtyle ( With hired goons ) to impress Neha will make you smile. Another scene where Bobby n Dharmendra blackmail Mr.Oberoi and present him in front of Anu Kapoor as their butler to impress him will raise guffaws.
CONCLUSION : Watching YPD is like eating chicken chowmein at a trashy joint where you get to bite into chicken nuggets after ingesting a lot of bland chowmein. While the taste entices you as long as it lasts in your mouth, the journey to relish the next juicy bite wading through stale vegetables pieces n washy sauces grows painfully tedious.
I feel the makers have wasted a good opportunity to impress audience as they have not been able to invoke much laughter despite featuring all three Deols in their movie. Go n watch it only if you are real fan of Deol family and enjoy the camaraderie between them.
ROHIT SHARMA.
rohitreview@gmail.com
